OIL: Mid-Day Oil Summary: Crude Remains Bearish

Crude futures are resuming the bearish trend pulling back towards the lows from yesterday with demand still in focus ahead of industry reports this week and US CPI data tomorrow.

• Brent NOV 24 down 1% at 71.14$/bbl
• WTI OCT 24 down 1.1% at 67.95$/bbl
• Tropical storm Francine is expected to become a hurricane soon the National Hurricane Center said in a recent update.
• Tropical Storm Francine is being monitored with an estimated 125kbd of crude output in its path, according to Bloomberg calculations from US data.
• Francine could impact 9 major oil and gas platforms and 12 Gulf coast refineries. Chevron, Exxon and Shell have evacuated some staff and closed some facilities. It is expected to make landfall on Wednesday in Louisiana as a category 2 hurricane.
• OPEC is set to issue its September oil market report at 12:00 GMT according to UBS analyst
• OPEC+ crude output fell 300k b/d to 40.73m b/d, amid maintenance in Kazakhstan and outages in Libya, Platts said.
• Russia’s oil output in August was close to its OPEC+ target according to Bloomberg sources with access to Energy Ministry data.
• Four-week average crude volumes slipped to 3.13m b/d in the week, down by 30k b/d compared to the previous period, Bloomberg said.
• China August crude import volumes were down 7% y/y but increased 16% on the month to 49.1m tons.
• Azerbaijan pumped 13.9m mt of crude and condensate in Jan-Aug 2024, according to the Energy Ministry, cited by Bloomberg.